In a total attempt to hijack this thread, especially since I have no idea to what project Midge refers, it would ALSO be nice if Brant would provide a general update on things 29" On-One.

There was virtually nothing 29er available all season. I know the 26 crowd was decently covered but someone screwed up big time on big wheels this year. The stinking teaser paint pictures, of no less than 8 Lurcher framesets, on facebook are at least 5 months old. Some graphic samples on the Flicker official are even older. Lurcher teaseded. AL teased. Steel delivered end of season with rackmounts (non braze semi-dumb) and canti bosses (really dumb) with maybe 10-20 frames per size with no restock. No Ti. No 29er race restock. It leaves me scratching my head.

Just let us know what is going on. A fine company. I have many fine bicycles from you and one from P-X. Just update.

The truth is we made a right mess this year of our stock availability - so apologies for that , we are trying to get it right next year and now we have finally made the move to have our own wholly owned US operation - to better get our product to market we are hoping to get it better in 2012 .

There were several reasons for this years stock situation -

- Titus acquisition - this was far more complicated and involved that we had allowed for , and sucked in a lot of our efforts , a lot of our focus was diverted to this and although we got there in the end , it was a real drain of our best staff .

- We truly cocked up our carbon 29er lurcher frame programme - the delays on the 29er lurcher is a simple and painful lesson that we wont make again . The true story is embarrassingly simple and almost laughable - the lurcher was held up due to a mis-communication with the factory on production of whippetts / carbon 456s - we had placed a schedule order for 250 frames per month - the factory interpreted this as an order for 3000 frames and produced them ! Then as they were then sat on 3000 frames they did not wish to make any lurchers . As I said laughable and a lack of clarity in our purchase orders / factory relationship that we have learned a lesson from .

- Steel 29er frames and scandals 29ers - the production issues with these were down to the new CEN rules , we had to redesign the frames slightly to get them to pass cen - this needed two efforts to pass cen , so thats a 6 month delay and half the year gone .

Its disappointing for us as we were one of the first companies to commit to 29er bikes and we have effectively thrown away a good part of an early lead we had .

Still having said that our sales are up 300% and even the most aggressive forecasting couldnt have foreseen that , so keeping up with supply has been very hard simply because our sales have tripled ! .

They say , and I hope you agree - its ok to make mistakes , the crime is not to learn from them ! so we are trying to move things forward .

We have made a lot of progress this year as a company and despite these stock issues , we have now a good solid team in place , and we think we will get it a lot better in 2012 . Brant is back, we have a much beefed up purchasing team with some real quality leading it , we have Michael Golinski and Shiggy heading up the new , and now fully functional US operation ., and of course the initial pain of the titus acquisition is sorted so that is starying to run a lot smoother .

So - apologies , sorry , we can do better , it wasnt good enough in 2011 , we think we will be better in 2012 .

.

Originally Posted by deltasierra

In a total attempt to hijack this thread, especially since I have no idea to what project Midge refers, it would ALSO be nice if Brant would provide a general update on things 29" On-One.

There was virtually nothing 29er available all season. I know the 26 crowd was decently covered but someone screwed up big time on big wheels this year. The stinking teaser paint pictures, of no less than 8 Lurcher framesets, on facebook are at least 5 months old. Some graphic samples on the Flicker official are even older. Lurcher teaseded. AL teased. Steel delivered end of season with rackmounts (non braze semi-dumb) and canti bosses (really dumb) with maybe 10-20 frames per size with no restock. No Ti. No 29er race restock. It leaves me scratching my head.

Just let us know what is going on. A fine company. I have many fine bicycles from you and one from P-X. Just update.

- We truly cocked up our carbon 29er lurcher frame programme - the delays on the 29er lurcher is a simple and painful lesson that we wont make again . The true story is embarrassingly simple and almost laughable - the lurcher was held up due to a mis-communication with the factory on production of whippetts / carbon 456s - we had placed a schedule order for 250 frames per month - the factory interpreted this as an order for 3000 frames and produced them ! Then as they were then sat on 3000 frames they did not wish to make any lurchers . As I said laughable and a lack of clarity in our purchase orders / factory relationship that we have learned a lesson from.

Midges are available in a 31.8mm version which is certainly a V2 addition.

Shiggy was working on various other bends/stuff but some were so completely crazy the factory couldnt make them unless they made them in carbon, apparently. Which got really expensive.

I am coming down with a cold, and was thinking about wider and more/less flarey bar options today.

I shall wait for my cold to go.

So the only current changes to the midge is the 31.8 mm size which has been out there a while. I think some of us were hoping for the revised bar which might have included a longer drop extension behind the hooks. I really like the original Midge design, but the bar is kind of short in the length of the bar behind the drops. I would have thought that making that change alone would have been an easy fix that would have netted a number of new sales.

+1 - That was my original question. Shiggy had hinted about possible changes in another thread and I was hoping for more info.

jw

Originally Posted by N10S

So the only current changes to the midge is the 31.8 mm size which has been out there a while. I think some of us were hoping for the revised bar which might have included a longer drop extension behind the hooks. I really like the original Midge design, but the bar is kind of short in the length of the bar behind the drops. I would have thought that making that change alone would have been an easy fix that would have netted a number of new sales.